P.O. Box 24-0 Ojai, Calif. ilgilletter 93024--O24-O May I995 V01. 14 Na 5

, I three voices laughing and talking: Gerry Mulligan, Jobim, and me. Um Abrago No Tom I remembered an evening in my apartment, just afier I had written Part Three that lyric. Jobim was demonstrating the song for Gerry. Having no rhythm section, no need to stay out of its way,‘ he was using the For all that he was revered in Brazil, Jobim was criticized there, full resources of the keyboard. And he was a formidable pianist. and he was not averse to criticizing back. Interviewing him in Brazil in 1990 for the introduction of the “Some Brazilians,” one journalist wrote, “never forgave Jobim I990 Ibm Jobim Songbook, Almir Chediak, its editor and compil- for being so extraordinarily successful. He has been described as er, reminded him that Villa-Lobos had been severely criticized in someone who sold his soul to the United States.” Brazil. ‘I sometimes think those who most criticize a country are those “He sure was,” Jobim responded. “His choices got pretty o love it most, not the conspicuous posturing patriots. Those limited: either change his profession, shoot himself, or do what he who truly love a country call on it to adhere to its highest ideals did. Forttmately, he chose the best alternative: he faced up to all and aspire to even higher. And Jobim said, “I’ve never seen a more those people who had absolutely no understanding of what he was corrupt, more bureaucratic coimtry than ours.” I daresay that cost doing . . . . In defense, he put on vainglory, saying, FI’m a genius,’ him a few friends. And he said, “We have this misery mania. and that was all. He just pretended to be vain. Eventually he had“ Brazil cannot see anything that works. Brazil loves Garrincha (a to leave Brazil. And if he hadn’t lefi, I doubt whether he’d have noted soccer player) but it needs to learn to love Pele. He was a reached the point ofachieving world renown as a composer, which success and Garrincha died a pauper.” (Jobim was a soccer fan.) he quite deserves.” The remark was no doubt in response to the resentment of his Chediak said, “You too.” success. But this attitude is endmic in the North American jazz “Maybe so,” Jobim said. “If I’d stayed in Brazil, I wouldn’t world where success is seen as evidence of mediocrity, while have made it past the comer bar, where I’d be sitting around failure, a miserable life, alcoholism,- or an early drug death drinking beer . . . In the Northem Hemisphere, people take things powera certain kind of critic to bestow an essentially conde- more seriously. Up there it’s cold and people stay indoors, all scending praise. Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck, and even bundled up. Without anything else to do, they write or compose. Miles Davis have known the sting of this; And that’s why all the great works were created in the Jobim said, “I’m not the one who badmouths Brazil. Brazil Hemisphere. In the tropics, the heat generates a search for water.” badmouths Brazil.” But Jobim did not know Canada, where the same qualities he He had even undergone criticism for his music itself, as superb describes in Brazil are to be found. The Canadians tend not ‘lit is. He said, “The more my music is Brazilian, the more they recognize the Canadian artist tmtil he or she has received the l me Americanized.” endorsement ofthe I am convinced that had Jobim not And he said, “I’ve dedicated my life to Brazilian music, been a major star in the United -States, he wouldn’t have been one because you already have the French to write French music and in Brazil either: But the very need that Canadians and apparently Americans to write American music.” For myself, I found his Brazilians havefor this American endorsement produces a covert music becoming more deeply Brazilian as he grew older and resentment ofthe United States. To succeed in New York City, and explored a broad range of the musical materials of his country. by extension Hollywood, is to succeed in the world, and everyone He said, “The praise comes from the people, the roguery from knows it. In 1953, when the couturiere Coco Chanel came out of the intelligentsia” an eight-year retirement, the French critics destroyed her. Then her There is one point about Jobim’s work that I would like to clear work was praised in Womens Wear Daily, Americans went wild up. Afier his death, I read a Brazilian piece about him that, for all about it, and then the French took her to their bosom. the admiration in its tone, said that he wasn’t much of a pianist or So this phenomenon is not limited to Brazil, nor for that is it a singer. He indeed wasn’t much of a singer, but he was a very new. Otherwise you would not find in Matthew 13:32 the sarcastic fine pianist whose simplicity on records was deceptive. Listen to (and usually misquoted) observation: “The prophet is not without his performance on electric piano of Ary Barroso’s Brazil on the honor, save in his own country, and in his own house.” Stone Flower album. Andthere are some very good examples of There is no question in my mind that Jobim was a Brazilian his piano on the Wave album. ~ nationalist. But he was more than that, and of all the thingsvhe But I have another reason to be aware of the scope of his said, one remains particularly vibrant in my mind. It was a playing. One day, looking for a cassette on which to record rejection ofjingoism, of nationalism, of racism, of parochialism. something, I was playing some that were without labels. I heard a It seemed to echo something Jesus said (John 8:58), speaking of pianist playing Someone to Light Up My Life. He was playing it his spiritual unity with the world: “Before Abraham was, I am.” beautifully, a little like Bill Evans and with plenty of technique. I Jobim said to me, and he said it in English, “I am prior to could not decide who it was, until the ending, when I recognized borders.” Jobim suffered from bladder cancer. In November of 1994, he flew equally ubiquitous grinning Mexican bandit (even to the Frito to New York to undergo treatment at Mount Sinai Medical Center. bandido of later television notoriety), the sundry slick Latin Lover He returned to Brazil, telling reporters there that he had undergone types from various coimtries, and other ethnic stereotypes. To an angioplasty. His heart condition had been discovered during the dominate and ifnecessary exterminate a people requires their prior cancer examination. None of this surprised his doctors, who for demonization or at least debasement, and the portrayal of Latin years had been warning him about his eating and drinking habits. Americans during that period is ahnost as ghastly as the Mantan Gerry Mulligan, who had seen him in Rio a few months earlier, Moreland-Steppin Fetchit movie images of blacks. Carmen said on returning fiom Brazil that Jobim’s weight worried him. Miranda was used to such ends, whether consciously by studio Jobim had been trying to cut back on his alcohol intake, but heads and directors or out of a universal ignorance ofthe nature of some of his friends said he had to have a little Sco-watch at least Latin America and its nations, so diverse and different. once a day. It was even done in music. Frank Sinatra, during his days at the He retumed to Mount Sinai, where he underwent surgery. He Columbia label, had a record called The Cofiee Song that contained died Thursday, December 8, in the same hospital in which Bill such lines as “’way down among Brazilians, coffee beans grow by Evans had died fourteen years earlier. 0 Globo, the large Rio the billions, and they’ve got to find those extra cups to daily, ran a headline saying that he might have died of medical They’ve got an awfiil lot of coffee in Brazil . . . . A politici error. His son Paulo, now forty-four, denied this. He said the daughter was accused of drinking water and was fined a great big family knew his heart might not stand up to the operation: he had fifiy-dollar bill. They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.” been suffering from atherosclerosis for at least twenty years. (And if she had paid a fine, it would have been in cruzeiros, not His body arrived at the International Airport of Galeao at 10:15 dollars.) am. the next day, Friday. A spontaneous demonstration material- Yet another song, called The Best President We Ever Had, ized. A firetruck carried his cotfm, covered with a Brazilian flag, similarly patronized Spanish-speaking Latins, with its line, “We’re through the city. This developed into a parade that lasted four awfully sorry we shot him.” All of Latin America put together hours as Cariocas poured into the streets to bid him farewell. Some does not have a record of presidential assassinations and attempted sang his songs, some stood in silence. The truck passed in front of assassinations equal to that of the United States. Churrascaria Plataforma, a restaurant he particularly liked. Its Carmen Miranda was, in her Hollywood years, a victim of this waitersvand clients stood outside, some of them in tears. Its owner instutionalized condescension. was already considering putting a plaque, perhaps bronze, on But I must say that her fruity hats led to what at first I thought Jobim’s favorite table. was a musicians’ joke, until I heard at least two persons say they There were hundreds of mourners at the Botanical Gardens, had seen the incident on the TV quiz show Jeopamjw. A young where he liked to walk and near which he had lived in recent woman who had chosen popular music as her category was asked, years. His body was taken in the evening to Sao Joao Batista (Saint “What famous popular singer was associated with the song Strange John the Baptist) Cemetery, from which you can see Corcovado, Fruit?” After furrowing her brow» for a moment, she brightened and laid in a tomb near the graves of fiiends such as Vinicius de and said hopefully, “Carmen Miranda?” Moraes. Also buried there is Carmen Miranda Francisco Alves. Jobim’s genius and Creed Taylor’s faith in it, and the su A moment for Carmen Miranda. She was bom in Portugal and of some other Brazilians, including Sergio Mendes, did much to moved to Brazil where, during the 1930s, she was a champion and mitigate the image of Brazil left by movies and the misuse of major performer of great songs in what is considered a golden Carmen Miranda. period of Brazilian song. The Hollywood film industry made a clown and a fool of her. Indeed, on the assumption that the The ways in which popular music reflect and affect the political Americans didn’t know the difference between Spanish and climate of a country are fascinating. Nor, as we have noted, is this Portuguese —- and they were right about that — they cast her as phenomenon limited to popular music, as witness the predominance various nationalities other than Brazilian. She was cast as an of serialism and its derivatives in postwar Germany, and, given Argentine in her first picture, Down Argentina Way. And the Germany’s historical musical prestige, in other countries as well. movie people always had her dancing with a great and foolish grin But popular music is ubiquitous, all but inescapable in our on her face and those hats made of piled fruit. electronic age, and it is very powerful. The casting of Carmen Miranda, and various other performers As I said, it is not, I think, a coincidence that an exquisite from the other, Spanish-speaking, countries of South America, in sunburst of great popular music occurred in Brazil during the time the movies during the 1930s and ’40s and even later, reflected a of optimism _ generated there by the Kubitschek administration. general condescension toward all the peoples to the south: the lazy Afier that, the generals. Nor is it coincidence that this bossa nova mafiana Mexican dozing under a sombrero against an adobe wall music took hold in the United States during the Kennedy adminis- (Mexicans are the hardest-working people I have ever seen) or the tration, which in its early days inspired a mood of aspiration and \

optimism, whether justified or not. After his assassination, there At a more practical level, residents and businessmen along the arose a general unarticulated sense that something had gone terribly avenida worried about the cost of changing their stationery, historically wrong. And the shriek of distorted guitars and the business cards, invoices, advertising, even drivers’ licenses. moral pomposities of Bob Dylan were heard in the land. The The mayor recanted and the new signs were taken down, the popular music of the United States began an accelerating decline old ones restored. But the battle was not ended. A number of into ugliness and illiteracy that has not ended yet. politicians came up with the idea that Rio’s Galeao (it means galleon) Airport should be named after Jobim. This drove travel The day after Jobim’s death, the govemor of the state of Rio de agents and aviation executives wild: this would necessitate Janeiro armounced a three-day period of mouming. changing computer and ticketing procedures all over the world. That night, in the bars, most of the talk was of Jobim. Waiters On this issue, I think I can speak for Jobim: in both the remembered his heavy drinking. He was said to have given up Portuguese lyrics and my lyrics to Samba do Avifio (Song of the Scotch, his uisquinho, but not beer. A waiter at the bar named Jet), we wrote of arriving at the airport of Galeao. How can I Garota de Ipanema —~ the girl from Ipanema — in honor of the change that to arriving at Tom Jobim International Airport? It ‘rg said that in the past Jobim would have ten glasses of beer a doesn’t have the same ring, and anyway, it cannot possibly be day, then come back the next day to pay his bill. Really? Then he made to fit the music in either language. was doing well. Sergio Mendes and I remember when he arrived Someone else came up with the idea of naming the road from in Califomia to stay at Sergio’s house in Sherman Oaks for a few the airport into the city after Jobim. The matter remains unre- days. Knowing Jobim’s habits, Sergio had filled the refiigerator solved. Nothing yet has been named afier him. And somehow I with Heineken’s. By that night, Jobim had gone through thirty-six think he would find all this very funny. After all, as far as I know, bottles of it. g they haven’t got around to naming anything after Dorival Caymmi The next day, Saturday, the mayor of Rio announced that or Ary Barroso, two of Jobim’s friends and certainly his idols. Avenida Vieira Souto, the boulevard along the Ipanema oceanfront “Dorival Caymmi,” he told me in 1974, “is a very important named after a famous engineer, would be renamed Avenida Tom Brazilian composer. He is from Bahia, so he has a different Jobim. Jobim liked to sit on a bench there and watch the girls go background from me. He is one of the pillars. He came when he by. Jobim said, “I’m already at that age to watch the girls from was about twenty-something to Rio de Janeiro, and then back and afar. The bad part is the older you get the prettier the girls forth for a period of time, and then he moved permanently to Rio. become.” Indeed, it was there that he saw the gorgeous adolescent He tried to live in Bahia, but by now it is a touristic resort. Not who inspired the song that, more than any other, launched the only foreigners, but also the Brazilians themselves. He had a house career that made him a millionaire. How Jobim would have felt there, but it was like a museum. The bus would stop with the about this is of course unknown, but we can make a guess: when tourists. I think Dorival will never retum to Bahia. In the big city a street was named afier Vinicius de Moraes, he said, “Look what he is anonymous. In his beautiful penthouse in a high building, he fiy have done with Vinicius. He has become a street. Now the can fix his hammock. He can have the guitar and think about Bahia s roll over him and the dogs come and pee over him.” as it used to be. Bahia is a painting on the wall. I The plates bearing Jobim’s name went up in January. Residents “Caymmi met Ary Barroso, who wrote Bahia and Brazil. He along this street of luxurious tall apartment buildings immediately did very well with Walt Disney. Barroso was the most famous complained. They prepared to file a lawsuit against the city composer in Brazil. He was a very good friend of mine. He got govemment. Helio Cabal, who once was Brazil’s ambassador to the cirrhosis. He called me. He said, ‘Antonio, ain’t you gomia visit United States and, retired now, lives on the street, said, “Can you me?’ I said, ‘Sure. I read in the newspaper that you were a little imagine if the mayor of New York — what’s his name, Giuliani? sick and I didn’t want to disturb you.’ He said, ‘What do you — decided to change the name of Park Avenue to Frank Sinatra mean, a little sick? I’m dying, man. You come here now. I want Avenue?” to see you.’ Well, yes, one can imagine it. The name of Idlewild Airport “I rushed to his house. He had a beautiful house on a hill. You was changed to John F. Kennedy. In Orange County, Califomia, could see the sea. He had a grand piano. He called Dorival there is John Wayne Airport, and John Wayne is seen as an Caymmi too. We got together there. He said, ‘Well, my friends, American hero, rather than as an actor. “Should someone change I’m gonna die.’ Naturally we said, ‘No, come on.’ Dorival said, the name of Fifth Avenue or the Champs Elysees?” Cabal demand- ‘No. You have to change your life. You can’t go on drinking as ed. Well don’t count on the French: the names of streets don’t you used to do.’ He was in his sixties. Dorival convinced him that seem to mean much in Paris. Sometimes the name of a street he was not gonna die. Then he would say, ‘No, I’m gonna die.’ He changes every few blocks, for the sake of honoring sundry dead was very nice. He said, ‘Even if I don’t die, what kind of life? I dignitaries, and they changed one street name to Quai Kennedy so will go to a square to read the newspaper.’ Because he always quickly that I can’t remember its original name. liked to be with the orchestra, drinking Scotch. He liked to live. “Ary was bom in Minas Gerais.” It is one of the large states of Whats become of them? Whats happened to the sky? Brazil. It is north of Rio de Janeiro. Its name means General Mines. “It had such tremendous, beautiful forests, with wild life. The hands on the clock read a quarter to twelve Everything was gone. He went there. Tried to get back to the old What in the world are we doing to ourselves? place. The place is not there any more. The same thing that happened with Dorival. And sometimes now I find myselfthinking The process of recording has changed our perceptions beyond about Ipanema, like the paradise that I knew, the strip of sand with imagination. The dead don’t die. If you play back the raw tapes of the lagoon on one side, the sea on the other side, and the blue old record dates, you hear the laughter and the small talk before transparent water, the sun and the surfing. And the fish! The the takes, the ghosts of old laughter and conversations. Listening incredible amount of fish. If you would drop a line in the water, to the tape of Jobim and me talking, it is hard for me to believe you could catch pompano, double A class fish, bluefish, snook. that he grew old — well, almost old — and is gone. I still see the Everything. For nothing. Within half an hour, you would give fish young man opening the door to me on that rainy night in Rio. to your fi'iends. “I agree,” Jobim said afier I finished the song. “I used to go to “And Guanabara Bay, that was such a paradise. All that is gone. the mountains, to what they call the virgin forest that had thu It’s oily. You can see the sewage going to the sea, the industrial huge trees that take four centuries to grow. They’re all gone. - things. The fish started to die in the lagoon. They used to come, all “The song we just wrote. . . ” He was referring to Double kinds of fish, shrimp, they used to come to the lagoon to spawn. Rainbow, which we had finished that very morning. “It’s about the The beach was white with this fine, singing sand, that you run, you rain,” he said, “it’s about the forest, about the fox. I love nature, listen cling cling cling. It was so fine that it sings when you run. you know. I hope she loves me. And naturally, we don’t like to see Now, naturally, Brazil is booming industrially, and all this is gone. things being destroyed. Now, for instance, they are opening the trans-Amazon highway, these tremendous roads. And the wood will 1 The fieeway came, and industry pollutes the sea and the air.” \ H About the time Jobim had gone back to Brazil, I had gone back be gone, those big trees, mahogany, precious woods. And the {sf to Canada, or more precisely to a picture in my mind of the days animals will vanish. And yet at the same time they need the land of my youth. And like Jobim’s Rio, it had all changed. Now you to plant, to grow food, and roads to transport it. couldn’t swim in Lake Ontario. The glorious orchards of the “We are quite a mean animal, an ingenious, destructive animal. Niagara Peninsula were disappearing, like those of Michigan. In We are building a desert.” the nineteenth century, the railways came to transport the food. And then, to throw off the mood, he said, “Let’s sing our The towns sprang up along the railways. The doctors diminished song.” death, or rather postponed it. The populations grew. Then came the Double Rainbow has had quite a number of recordings in the automobile, and the highways to connect those towns, and the big twenty-one years since that conversation, by Stan Getz and Elis transport trucks, endless flows of traffic day and night, not only Regina (with our friend Oscar Castro-Neves on guitar) and others. leaving their emissions, but, which everyone forgets, devouring the A year or two ago, the remarkable singer Kevin Mahogany hada very oxygen out of the air at the same time we are cutting down hit on it. But in my mind’s ear, it remains as it was on the day Q the great forests that produce it. At last the shopping malls and the wrote it and were full of that curious pride and stillness, a vague parking lots. I had been as shocked by what was happening to amazement that you have been able to do it yet again, that come Canada as he was by conditions in Brazil. I told him I had written with completing a song, and it was still fi'agile and new and naive, and recorded a song about it, What in the World?: and we sang it, accompanied only by Jobim’s guitar.

This is a place where the pines used to stand. Listen! What in the world are they doing to the land? The rain is falling on the roses. The fragrance drifis across the garden, This was afield that my dog used to roam. like the scent ofsome forgotten melody. What in the world are they doing to my home? This melody belongs to you, x’ This was once a place to watch the silent clouds. belongs to me, Now the neon screams at frightened rushing crowds. belongs to no one. 1 This is a beach that was lonely andflee. See the way crimson petals What in the world are the doing to the sea? scatter when the wind blows. Ah, the secret sigh of love that, p - This was once a place to watch the herons fly suddenly the heart knows. ,5 See now! years ago. (4) Stone Flower and me are superb. There are A robinls there among the puddles, moments on Wave when Jobim cu ittle loose and you hear how and hopping through the misty raindrops, well he really played piano." . has come to tell us that it.’s spring. (6) Passarim, recorded in 1987, is a from a time when Jobim was traveling with a group that included members of his own Look at the double rainbow! fam' t shows how far he had gone from bossa nova. The rain is silver in the sunlight. ‘ particular favorite of mine is Elis and Tom, which Jobim A babyfox is in the garden m with the late Elis Regina. It was produced by Luiz Oliveira, recorded in Los Angeles in February and March of 1974. Elis O rain, sweet loving mother rain Regina, twenty-nine at the time, was one of the best singers ever that soaks the earth, to come out of Brazil. She had the sweetest voice. I find myself that swells the streams thinking of it as a dear voice. She and Jobim are having fim, and and cleans the sky; it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the Portuguese lyrics. ' that drains the blue. Besides, good verbatim translations are provided in the -liner notes. (8) Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim and (9) See now Sinatra and Company. thejasmine vines are all in blossom. The highly lyrical music of Claus Ogerman is fascinating in its A little brook ofclever waters own right. I recommend these albums. (10) Symbiosis is a jazz flows into a vast river . . . . concerto with Bill Evans. (ll) In Bill Evans Thio with Symphony Orchestra, Claus arranged pieces by Bach, Scriabin, Granados, and It was the last song we would ever write together. Like his little Fauré. (12) Gate ofDreams is a gorgeous-album that partakes of brook of clever waters, ‘Jobim has flowed. into the river of history. both jazz and classical techniques. also strongly recommend (13) Elegia and (14) Some Times. Amoros0 to the best of my knowledge is the only album o Gilberto made with Claus. © Splendid. i _ The price is a $18 per CD plus $2 for packaging,‘ and postage. I had generous help fiom many persons in writing this. I must The closing- date for ordering is August 31. I’ll put‘ all the orders thank themfor searching their memories, reading manuscript, and in at once. Allow three or four weeks afier that for delivery. As in making suggestions. They include Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, the case ofthe Farnon albums," your checks will not be "cashed until Oscar Castro-Neves, and Creed Taylor. Fred Hall transferred an the records have been shipped. old open-reel tape of my conversation with Jobim to cassette so If this works out, I’ll set up a service to do this for the that I could listen to it. Above all, I thank Harold Santo ofLisbon, pertinent material in future articles. ‘ e - qrtugal, who lived in S60 Paulofor twentyyears and is a scholar fBrazilian music. It was he who suggested that I write this, -and Grover’: Comer provided me with a large body ofdocumentation. Because ofhim I relived apart of my life that I had shut away in a drawer: Um Youth Everlasting abraco com gratidfio. By Grover Sales

Recommended Records Tb know no history is to remain a boy all ones life. Cicero (I02-43 BC) So many people ordered the Robert Farnon albums (and they’ve all been sent; if you haven’t received yours, let me know) and so An overriding phenomenon of the United States afler World War many urged that a similar service be-made available in future that II is the discovery of the Formtain of Youth. Or, to put it less I have arranged to order the records I recommend. And I recom- charitably, Americans for half a century now have shown a mendifollowing, which I’ve numbered: disturbing general tendency to remain frozen in perpetual adoles- (1) A sampler of Jobim’s work is on one of the Jazz Masters cence. series, which I compiled for Verve last year from a number of The emergence and then triumph of pubescent culture was difierent albums. It is called simply Antonio Carlos Jobim. launched by interrelated developments without precedent in history: (2) Getz-Gilberto, Jobim’s first American album. a population explosion coupled with the sudden breakdown of the (2) Antonio Carlos Jobim: The Composer Plays. The first Claus “tradition-givers” that once shaped our national psyche: the family, Ogerman-Jobim collaboration remains as fresh as it was thirty-two the church, the school. The wartime emergence of latchkey

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children and the new mobility of their parents ended The Family A generation that came of age languishing in invincible as a conveyor of the past. The dizzying decline of our educational ignorance of the rich mainstream of cabaret satire from Mort Sahl system is too apparent to need elaboration here. History has been to Lenny Bruce finds hilarity in Chevy Chase, Jim Carey, and replaced by courses in Group Awareness, Women’s Consciousness, Bevis and Butthead. The urbane wit of Steve Allen once made his and Forming Resistant Identities. Our so-called school system has night-time television show the most popular in America with teen- graduated a generation that cannot locate Vietnam on the map and agers, according to a survey done by a magazine for high-schoolers doesn’t know who was president during the Civil War, but does at the time. We have come down to David Letterman. know who Madonna was playing hide-the-weenie with in any As for the glories of network radio, in days when national given week. audiences hung on every word ofthe erudition ofCliflon Fadiman, Commercial television, with an assist from Top Forty radio, has Oscar Levant, and Franklin P. Adams, fielding truly difiitg replaced the home, the school, and the church as the giver of questions, consider the level of today’s TV quiz shows. When tradition. In his excellent collection of essays, Conscious Objec- was asked if it was he who said, “Radio was theater of the mind, itions, Neil Postman noted that television emphasizes patterns of television is theater of the mindless,” Steve Allen replied, “I don’t *behavior that psychologists have associated with childishness: know whether I said it, but I certainly agree with it.” The late compulsive consumerism and the obsessive need for the instant radio, television, and film director Fletcher Markle called television gratification of every whim and desire, regardlessggf 1h§__(_;QllS6- “the haunted fish tank.” quences to oneself or anyone else. “Television,’l continues Post- The comic pages have dwindled fiom Pogo, with its sharp man, "“§éer'irs"to" "rsirarso population that consists of three age political satire and delightfully literate whimsy, to Garfield. groups: on the one end, infancy; on the other, senility; and in But it is music that ofiers the most ominous examples, with between a group of indeterminate age where everyone is some- lyrics to match: I Wanna Hold lbur Hand I Cant Get No where between twenty and thirty and remains that way until dotage Satisfaction, Km Cant Always Get What lint Want, C'mon God descends!’ , . and Buy Me a Mercedes Benz, and We Doni Need No Education. A new generation living under the threat of The Bomb’s And the sex goddess of the late 1970s was a child molester’s terminal oblivion fell prey to nameless fears and terrors of fantasy named Brooke Shields. childhood exquisitely caught by lnterlandi, the forgotten cartoonist This phenomenon of infantile regression permeates the political of the early Cold War; in a strip unpublishable in those grim sphere. Television has converted political discourse in the United twilight years by anyone but Paul Krassner’s The Realist, Interlan- States into a form of entertainment. The dominant radical right of di’s button-down Everyman encounters the Nuclear Defense poster the Republican Party hired to impersonate the president a movie with its awesome mushroom cloud and the waming: “When the actor of notorious limited intellectual resources who performem Bomb falls, what will you do?” Like many soldiers facing combat sturmingly that after eight years of an “administration” for the first time, he reverts to infancy: “I’d shit.” rendered political satire obsolete in America, Gallup pollsters f0l1l1d Jazz people, particularly those who came of age during the that the overwhelming majority of a distracted electorate, had the Swing Era “when a lot of popular music was good and a lot of Constitution permitted, would have voted a third time forthe Great good music was popular,” as Gene Lees has put it, have long been Staggering Booby. ‘ aware of the proliferation of lucrative musical garbage media- Afler World War ll, a phenomenon imique in history arose in 1 crafted for vast armies of culturally rootless and aliterate children. the guise of a vast army of semi-literate children divorced fiom a (Neal Postman defines the “aliterate” as someone who can read but sense of history, with vast amounts of money to spend, engagedjn . doesn’t. Philip Roth estimated that there are 120,000 serious a total assault on the culture of their elders. A new multi-national readers of literature in the United States, prompting one book entertainment conglomerate that concentrated capital in increasingly publisher to comment: “He’s an optimist”) The rise of rock, rap, 1 fewer hands obeyed the inflexible laws of entrepreneurial capital- t and hip-hop and new age, with their concurrent alienation from the ism by not merely maintaining the market but the culture of the past, are not confined to music but infect the root ‘I market, to fumish the new media-manipulated youtheult with and branch of American life. children’s music, children’s movies, children’s television, chil- Examples suggest themselves endlessly. George Lucas, by his i dren’s politics, and the orchestrated media distractions of the sins § of Tonya Harding and the travails of Di and Fergie. own admission, made the Star Wars Trilogy with a twelve-year-old 2 audience in mind. The top-grossing rental films of the 1980s were 5 An unimaginable amount of heavy capital has been dedicated E.T;..77te Return of the Jedi, and Batman; and thus far in the to the profitable business of keeping Americans forever lost in 1990s, Jurassic Park and Home Alone, whose $250 million grosses 2 childhood. will by topped by Waynefs World and Teenage Mutant Ninja Grover Sales teaches jazz history at Stanford University Turtles. The largest selling board game is Trivial Pursuit. <.,_..... =-X ' 1 “'1 1: * ° Copyright 79.95 by Gene lees